I hate to do it, but as I announced back in July 2012 the time has come to ask for your help in continuing to provide life saving support to the transgender community. I have single-handedly financed the operations of Susan's Place since 1996 with very little outside support. I did this by putting every nickle and dime I earned into the web site. It is and will remain a labor of love for me.
I have done this using income from my job, help from my boss, and of course maxing out some really good credit cards. In that time I figure that I have spent roughly $174,000 myself over the last 17 years and I eventually need to get some of that back. The figure includes my time, hardware, software, server maintenance costs, and bandwidth. However my personal finances have been at the maxed out point for several years as my costs to provide this website have steadily risen while the income from my job has remained flatlined.
Those expenses will continue to go up some as we make some much needed changes which will modernize this web site and also expand the offerings that we provide.
In the last year this site has served 2,288,142 Visits from 1,335,349 Visitors accounting for 13,022,777 page views. Since I started keeping stats using Google analytics in November 2006, we had 9,159,286 visits from 5,038,423 visitors accounting for 58,504,050 page views. Between 1996 until now I have had several hundred people spontaneously contact me to tell me how this web site has saved their lives, so we are doing good works; and I want to continue to do so.
I have thought long and hard how to spread the costs of providing lifesaving peer support for the Transgender Community, here is what I have come up with.
First off everything that is freely available to you today on this web site, will remain free with one exception, the private Just for us forums are going to become subscriber only.
I am adding the ability to make donations or you may chose to setup a reoccurring subscription to the site.
We are going to allow people who wish to help with the monthly costs to do so by establishing a monthly subscription option for $10.00 or $20.00 per month for those who want to help support the site.
First, I want to first make absolutely clear that if you choose to make a donation or subscribe to the site, there are no refunds! We also do not offer any guarantees of any kind. We reserve the right to add, change or remove any products and services which are part of any packages at any time.
Second, and perhaps most importantly I want to make very clear that by supporting this web site you will not receive special treatment in regards to violations of the rules.
The primary difference between a donor and a subscriber is:
- Donors give to support the site and do not generally expect to receive any benefits for doing so. Donors also choose how much and how often they wish to donate. Donors can choose to be publicly recognized for their donation.
- Subscribers choose to give a fixed amount on a set schedule. Most of your subscription goes to help pay for the services provided. Subscribers do not receive special recognition.
For those who are still in the closet I have come up with a way to so that the subscription or donation can be identified as a reoccurring donation to a non-transgender foundation, so if you need to explain the charge. This will be explained in the Supporter News forum you gain access to as a donor or subscriber.
Minimum donationAs donations are processed by paypal and we are charged a transaction fee for each donation, we would request that you consider making a minimum donation of $5.00, however any amount over $1.00 is accepted. There is no maximum donation.
RecognitionDonors can chose to be publicly recognized for their donation, or not. If they choose to be publicly recognized for their donation they will be listed on a web page or forum post with their forum name, and the total amount donated.This is a choice you will have to make, I will be happy to recognize any of my donors. (
To be publicly recognized for your donation you must have, and be logged into the forum account when you make your donation. )
SubscribersI am hoping for 1,000 to subscribe. This will bring in $10,000 per month.
Future PlansAfter covering operating costs, I want to pay for a new professional design for the site from the ground up. I also want to recruit some world renown gender professionals to come here to provide some guidance and services to members and supporters. Anything over 1,000 subscribers would be simply amazing. After that we will continue to invest a portion of the profits back into providing more and more services for members and supporters. I don't expect this to happen in a year, if it does that would be awesome but I am patient. In the mean time I will keep paying the costs until the site is able to support its self.
I also need to reimburse my costs in supporting the site over the years.
Staff may also eventually receive a small stipend, starting with administrators and as we are able to the moderators and other staff. Don't plan on that any time soon however.
We may also offer
username@members.susans.org email addresses to subscribers. If enough revenue is generated we will be looking at adding a slew of other members only benefits such as moderated chats with experts and personalities of interest to the transgender community, informative articles, tips, tutorials etc.
Another advantage of this will be that I will be able to dedicated more time to Susan's Place.
Thank you for your support!I hope that many of you will choose to help do your part. Thanks for you time, support, and attention.
How to subscribe or donateTo make a donation visit
our donations page (
To be publicly recognized for your donation you must have, and be logged into a forum account when you make your donation. )
To Subscribe you must be logged in on a forum account, then visit
https://www.susans.org/forums/index.php?action=profile;area=subscriptionsHow to cancel a subscriptionTo stop a subscription you go to your paypal account, click history at the top of the page. Locate the subscription to this site on that page, and click details. Then click the cancel subscription button. When your current subscription runs out, it will not be renewed.